I try hard to understand social cues and the like. To be honest, I am steadily getting better at it. Then I mess up something and I feel worthless each time.

The “fumble” in question had to do with political stuff. I have a democratic socialist viewpoint and majority of my family do not, or do not care enough.

That being said, I get in debates with various members of my family about the current President, Donald Trump. In my opinion he is incompetent and dangerous. Nothing that he has done has been beneficial to this country. Now, this is my opinion and I respect others rights to having their opinions. I think the critical thinking required to understand politics has helped me.

I hate that politics create rifts between me and other family members. It tears me up inside. I, from a moral standpoint and many others, can not support the current President.

The fact that I brought politics to this blog upsets me. I do not want to be that type of blog. I want it to help others on the autistic spectrum and those associated.

It seems when I mess up socially, I need to process it. I look back at the conversation for hours trying to figure what I could have done. I know this to a frivolous pursuit though. Learning to accept what the past is and using it as a learning tool should be how I approach it.

I am sitting at a table in the house staving off a panic attack because of this. Wishing I could change how I acted prior. Writing all of this is helping though.

I am going to continue doing my best, but I need others to know, I am not perfect. About as far away as you can be actually, but I’m trying.

So I am feeling depressed right now. Instead of dwelling in self hatred; I have decided to try to help others who suffer from depression. To do this I am going to look at my feelings right now. Analysis will come after, alongside some reflection.

To start, my anxiety is also quite high. I would say a 7/10. Why am I anxious? Mainly from thinking about the future, my romantic interests, my grades, and my job. All are pretty big things I imagine. It seems to choke me with anxiety. What I do distract myself is two-fold. I go into my local game store, LGS, and I play games. Such as magic the gathering or DnD. The distraction helps, but is not a cure all for me. I have to figure out ways to curb my anxiety. To do that I need to pinpoint some triggers for myself.

One of my biggest triggers is becoming social. This is not a bad thing, yet it is still a trigger. Anxiety, for me, has always been a way for me to figure out my comfort levels. Nowadays I purposefully put myself in situations that cause me anxiety. I want to know the limit of how much I can take.

It’s not much today, unfortunately. Little things set off my anxiety. The silver lining being that it was just a small amount of anxiety. Management of this level of anxiety comes pretty easy for me. Walking around Lancaster city is a trigger for my anxiety and I have come to be really good at managing this type of anxiety that I get.

Back to the original question though, and I still find myself unable to answer well enough to satisfy myself. Thinking on it, I can say with confidence, that I am unsure of my future. I know I want to finish college and graduate, and I want to get a job. Besides those two goals; I am at a loss of what I want from life.

I want a lot of things for my life to pan out and I am not confident that they ever will. I feel like I have fallen off of any motivation that I might have had to pursue those things either.

The main thing that I find I have been struggling with is my feelings for others. I have them, and they are quite strong, but I am afraid of rejection and I feel like a coward for not outright asking them to go out sometime. I have been burned multiple times, I think, and I don’t like the feeling that I get when I am rejected.

That feeling is an overwhelming anxiety at that moment. That is pretty much it for my romantic centric stuff.

I did okay this semester with my grades. I feel like I need to do much better though. I hold myself to a standard that I am not meeting. It’s weird, I get anxious and depressed about my grades so I try to distract myself from it and I then do bad on my projects. That leads to me doing bad at school. It’s a vicious cycle. I need to figure out a way to regain my motivation.

My depression is the main wall in getting my motivation back. I have spots of high motivation, but they last a couple days at most. Then my depression comes creeping back.

I have anxiety about my job mainly because I missed two days. This was due to a medical issue, but it still caused me a lot of anxiety. I tend to have bouts of imaging the worst possible thing that could happen, happen. I am enjoying my job a lot now though and logically I cannot see anything bad happening.

The way I dealt with this bout of depression, and many others, is attacking it with logic. I have a logic based thought process and using that is great for getting rid of anxiety and depression. I simply tell myself that depression does nothing to positively affect me. It is a negative feeling. Logic dictates that I do not need it. The same for my anxiety.

This is a way that I deal with my anxiety and I know it works for me. I am always looking for other ways to approach my depression, and I would like to see if other ways work well for others. Please comment if there is a technique that you use that really helps you. Thanks for reading.

I tend to overthink from time to time. This is not necessarily a bad thing, yet it troubles me when it happens. It has, unfortunately, become a habit of mine to react. My reaction is usually screwing up something. This is due to me overthinking something and then thinking some more on it.

Thinking on it, when I am like this, it usually is because I get in a social mood. What I mean by this is I talk to a lot of different people. That then translates to more social cues and interactions. I tend to mess up those two sometimes. I am practicing working on this though.

With more social cues comes more thinking and overanalyzing said cues. Or just missing them completely. That is still super common for me.

I am trying really hard not to overthink stuff. I just do though, and its definitely something that needs work. Then again, I do not know if it is something that can be worked on. It might just be something I deal with from having autism. If so, no big deal, I will just move on. If it is something I can work on, well, then it needs investigated, and ultimately, conquered.

Regardless of how it turns out, it is a trait of mine I would like to work on. To at least better my understanding of the puzzle that is autism.

Obi-wan may have been sarcastic in the gif that I used above, but I am doing a good job, yet I have been having doubts as of late about myself and it is affecting my daily life in unproductive ways.

I am always worried that I am failing at something. It does not have to be anything concrete either, it can be something like life.

An example of a thought that I had the other day, “I am failing at life.” I know that this is an absurd statement and I am not failing at life, but I still feel like that sometimes. As of late, I have gotten better at conveying my thoughts and emotions through FaceBook messenger. There are a few people who let me vent to them and help me get through my emotions.

One of those people I developed feelings for and I convinced myself that I had these feelings for a long time. Even though they manifested due to an issue that I was having with someone else that we both knew. I made a fool of myself and I felt I was close to losing a dear friend of mine due to things that I said.

That is another thing that I perceive that I am failing at. That being relationships. Up until now, I have been terrified of being in meaningful relationships and I never truly pursued one, save the one from this past summer that I messed up. The past couple of weeks I have asked two people out. I was turned down by both and I think that caused a catalyst for me. I started behaving differently and I said things that I regret now.

The first girl I asked out was okay with me after the fact and I still would like to believe that we are friends, but there is a voice in the back of my head that says that I messed up any chance I might have had. Just at being friends, not in a romantic sense, and I let that voice’s power grow. That led to the situation with the second girl I asked out. She was kind enough to let me down easy and I appreciated that, but I developed this perverse thought that I could talk to her about anything. No boundaries and I said things and sent her things that I greatly regret. That voice telling me I was failing was in loudspeaker mode at that point.

Then, she forgave me. It was that simple. She forgave me for my stupidity and set boundaries that I would not cross. Even though I feel horrible with how I treated her, I am thankful that the situation happened. It showed me a great many things about myself that I had not realized up until that point.

Those things being that when I become attracted to someone I need to look at my inner self and tell it to slow down and be thoughtful. This is something I was not in the last situation I put myself. The second thing is that I need to really soul search myself. Not just the cursory glance like I usually do, but an in-depth analysis. I have feelings that need to be sorted out. I have habits that need to be broken.

As a result of all of this that has been happening, I have been having nightmares for the past four days. I hope by writing this piece I can stop them. I will let you guys know tomorrow if I have one.

Also, for a fleeting moment, I blamed my autism. It was just a moment, but long enough that I noticed it. I feel half sick that I would blame autism for this. I have beaten autism; at least I thought I had. I refuse to use it as a crutch though. I want to stand on my own and take the responsibility of what I have been doing. A lot of it has been wrong and I am working to fix it.

It’s good that I have recognized that I have a problem that needs to be addressed though and it is something that I can talk to with my support network. It is something that I have to talk with about with my support network. I need to leave the thoughts I have been having behind and start moving forward. There are things I would like to have and I am working on ways to get those things. I got a job, but I am not sure when I start, but I am really excited for that.

Finances have been an issue for me as of late too. I am on disability and I am having a hard time making ends meet, hence the job. I am just worried about how much I am allowed to make versus my disability income. It seems to be a fine line; one that I need to explore. I also need to cut expenses. I make it sound easy, but it will require me to get rid of things that I love. Such as my magic cards. They hold value and I have need of value, so I will have to start selling some of the more expensive ones. I also need to start budgeting a lot better. I used to just spend money and hope that my parents could bail me out, but that is something that I need to stop doing. I am living in a house separate from them and there is no need for them to have to worry about my finances.

To go back to the title of the post, “Why am I so worried?” I think I have the answer to that question. I am an adult and I have to be responsible to take care of everything on my plate, and if I cannot start taking things off of the plate. Start dedicating more time to productive activities and do things to help me further my goals. It’s going to be a hard adjustment for me, but I know I can do it.

I just left New York City. I have been there since Wednesday. I was there because I was attending a conference for journalism. I was quite content there, much to my surprise. Cities are usually a place I do not feel very comfortable in. All the people and all of the sensory things.

I was fine though. Being self aware helped me out for this trip. I had one anxiety spike the whole trip. Not to say there were no stresses, but I did well and had a lot of fun.

My fear going on this trip was that it would be a repeat of last year’s trip and I am happy to say I was wrong. I attended panels and networked with professionals in the journalism field.

I was able to build connections with the rest of the staff for the paper too. I cherish the connections I made this past weekend.

The trip was a success on many levels. I revealed sides of myself that I have never done before. I was communicating what I needed a lot better than usual and I adapted to situations when the need arised.

I am thankful for the group I was able to go with. They are a great group of people. I’m glad that I know them. I never thought I would be at this point in my life. Where I have friends thar legitimately care about me. Before, I did not think I was worthy of that. Now, my thinking differs from that perception.

I learned stuff about myself too during this trip. I revealed my super analytical side to a member of staff and that person is now a confidant for me. I have three now! I never in my life thought I would have such good friends.

I am back at Millersville University as of last Saturday. Which would have been August, 26th. So far, I am doing well. Becoming acclimated to everything has proven to be easy for me this time around. I think this is due in part to a familiarity that I have with the system now.

This is my account of life as a family with my wonderful little boy Lachlan who has Autism, it is a true account of the highs and lows, the battles to be heard, understood, the emotions, the impact on my older children and wider family. What worked for us and moving forward.

I want to give voice to that which inspires me ,challenges me;that which brings the good ,the bad & the ugly out in me! I want to share my thoughts on everyday life moments -on mental health -on food & photography...There will be sharing of Memories & Stuff that have touched my soul & sparked my mind !!!